Context

"You paint the walls white, and then life comes in and fucks it up. Like minimal paintings that have been fucked up by butterflies landing in paint."[1]

Shortly after graduating from Goldsmiths (1989), Hirst began work on a series of paintings after seeing flies get stuck on primed canvases in his Brixton studio. Taking this idea, but wanting to create something beautiful, Hirst started fixing the bodies of dead butterflies to monochrome gloss-painted canvases. The following year, he incorporated a number of similar works into ‘In and Out of Love (Butterfly Paintings and Ashtrays)’ (1991), one half of his installation piece ‘In and Out of Love’ (1991). Describing their visual effect as: “solid fucking gloss-paint horror,” the choice of household gloss is integral to the works, intended by Hirst to “look like an accident of paint with butterflies stuck on it”.[2]

For the artist, the appeal of butterflies is created largely by the appearance of life they retain in death. The monochrome paintings are the earliest example of his use of the insects, which were to become one of his most recognisable motifs. On their repeated appearance in his work he explains: “I think rather than be personal you have to find universal triggers: everyone’s frightened of glass, everyone’s frightened of sharks, everyone loves butterflies.”[3]